Here are the remarks made by NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd at the National University of Ireland, Galway, on receipt of an honorary doctorate.
This is the biggest thing to happen to my family since 1932, when my
dad left his comely young fiancee, Peggy Meenehan, behind in Washington and made a triumphant trip back to Fanore in Clare.
In order to make the maximum impression, my dad took the savings he
had accrued in 40 years as an Irish bachelor and bought a brand new
shiny red roadster, which he shipped over with him on the boat.
The tiny Irish village was agog at the magisterial return of its
native son in his grand car.
“Ah, Mick," they thrilled, "you're a mill-un-aire."
He took everyone in the village for rides to Kinvara and delayed returning to his fiancee for a month because he was having such a good time. When my sister came for her first visit 34 years later, the whole village was still talking about it.
So I want to thank you, because this is my Red roadster.
It's a measure of how far we've come that my maternal grandmother, from the Walsh clan outside Ballinrobe, started using the name Delia when she arrived in the United States with $10 and a satchel to marry Martin Meenehan, a townie from Ballinrobe who had come earlier and who ended up as the manager of the family bar in Washington, "Meenehan's."
She thought her real name, Brigid, my middle name, would stamp her too clearly as the Irish serving girl she was here.
My father dropped the O from O'Dowd, thinking it would give him an edge in the "no Irish need apply" era.
My dad's older brother John, a Fanore farmer, could barely read or write and signed documents with an "x.' My dad, Mike Dowd, parlayed an eighth grade education and titanic charm to rise to be a police inspector who guarded American presidents, including Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he heaved up on his braces to throw out the first pitch for baseball season.
I feel that I followed in my father's footsteps. I watch over presidents, too. I just sometimes tweak them when they get out of line. And my weapon is different: a pen rather than a gun.
As Mary McAleese liked to say, the previous generation sank the well so that we could drink the water.
My friend and fellow columnist, Mary McGrory, always quoted Yeats, saying that writing was so hard, you had to go down upon the marrow of your bones.
I loved that, because I decided to become a writer at 20, when my cousin, Jimmy O'Connor, the postmaster of Galway, took me to Lady Coole's estate to see the old beech tree, the autograph tree, that all the famous Irish writers signed. Yeats, Shaw, Synge, O'Casey.
That Yeats line was the best advice I got from Mary McGrory. That, and "when you go to a party with very important people and you feel intimidated, always approach the shrimp bowl like you own it."
I’'ve discovered many wonderful new relatives this week in Ireland, including cousin Helen of Mayo, who told me red hair runs in my family, as well as a series of exotic diseases and allergies that I will soon expire from.
I am still a bit nervous, though, and I'll tell you why. Last year, when i came to Ireland to cover president Obama's trip here, I got a chatty immigration agent.
"And what are you after doing here?'' he asked me. "I’m here to report on president Obama discovering his Irish roots,'' i said.
"And how would that be?" he asked me.
"His people came from Moneygall," I told him.
He stared at me for a moment. "I have me doubts," he said.
My great fear is that I'll run into that same agent the next time I come to Ireland and when I give him my name, Doctor Dowd, he will stare at me and say
“I have me doubts.''
I want to especially thank my beautiful sister, Peggy, and all my
lovely Galway relatives who were kind enough to come. I know that my parents are looking down, from the Ballinrobe-Ballyvaughan neighborhood of heaven.
And my dad is putting his arm around my mom and murmuring, "not bad, Peg."
10 Comments
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Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.Bythebay | Jul 02, 2012, 04:31 PM EDT
IrelandNorth, Did not see her on irish TV last year nor Niall O'Dude. Didn't even see them at the Obama events at all which they should have been at if they are so major. You betray the usual American bigoted attitude to all other religions which we in Ireland do not. You also have to call names because of your bigotry. Maureen Dowd is American, she doesn't even get one look at in Ireland contrary to what those of you in the US would like to believe.
hermitTalker | Jul 02, 2012, 10:45 AM EDT
She is a supposed "liberal" which normally means she takes the anti-Natural Law line and blasts the Church of her ancestors, somewhat as Mozart was told in Amadeus by his critic "I do not like your opera, it has too many notes in it."
IrelandNorth | Jul 02, 2012, 06:18 AM EDT
Saw her on Irish TV during US Presidents visit last year (along with Niall Ó Dude) outside Trinitiy College/Dame Street Tech(!) Came across as authoritative, confident and impressive. Well deserved academic accolade, though regrettably some Irish WASPS (Ulster/Northern Ireland Free Presbyterians) like Bythebay betray characteristic detractive begrudgery. During the Famine/Great Hunger, Protestants evangelised Irish natives with a King James bible in one hand a bowl of soup in the other, a condition of such Christian altruism being that such recipients drop all Gaelic name prefixes like 'O' (grandson/descendant of) and/or M[a]c/Nic (son/daughter of). Such Anglicised Irish became known as 'soupers'. Conmhgairdas/congrats, Dr Maureen! Well deserved. Soups' on me without preconditions!
Irish Jack | Jul 01, 2012, 08:53 PM EDT
I like this being of Galway ancestry myself: Tuam. As to Mr. Burke's critique give me a break. Discrimination was alive and well in 1968 in the upper reaches of almost everything. Believe I experienced its subtle varieties when I reported for duty in Washington D. C. at the Pentagon It is only now that all of that has faded.
edmundburke | Jul 01, 2012, 06:34 PM EDT
Nice speech, but the family chestnut about her father who emigrated to Washington DC between 1920 and 1932 and dropped the "0" to avoid employment and other discrimination is way too much and a shabby repetition of a false historical narrative. Rampant employment and civil rights discrimination against Irish immigrants in the USA after 1920 was about as prevalent as beach resorts at the North Pole. Now we have Dowd,in addition to the Kennedys (who were fabulously wealthy by 1926) repeating these fantastic and false tales. The Irish were well established in the USA by 1920 and had no genuine problem getting settled and finding employment. In fact, jobseekers found willing employers among the many successful Irish American businessmen. As English speakers and Christians, the Irish were many rungs up above the Asians, Jews, Eastern Europeans, and Southern Europeans who competed with them for low wage jobs. True, the Klan was revived in the early 1920s, and killed an Irish priest in Birmingham (as much a personal vendetta as a strike against Catholics), but these incidents were rare, just as the residual bigotry among some WASPs, "Scotch Irish", Episcopalians, and Presbyterians which lingered was ineffective in suppressing the comfortable establishment and future prosperity of the majority of Irish immigrants during the Jazz Age.
Bythebay | Jul 01, 2012, 06:14 PM EDT
This woman makes no difference to Ireland at all. This is another filler story, convenient for IC to avoid finding real news.
patrickesq | Jul 01, 2012, 10:58 AM EDT
She usually has something worthy to say and she says it well. She is not afraid to step on someone's toes, including the RC Church hierarchy, when they deserve it.
firehawk | Jul 01, 2012, 10:22 AM EDT
Well deserved Maureen and a great story about your Dad's visit back here in 1932. As a person with Irish roots you well may be interested in knowing that 1916 Centenary Commemorative Coins are now available worldwide so please give them a mention in ther NY Times, see 1916uprising.ie for more details... Thanks, Firehawk
tomgallagher | Jul 01, 2012, 10:16 AM EDT
I agree wholeheartedly with donal1951.
donal1951 | Jul 01, 2012, 10:00 AM EDT
It was a fine speech with just the right touch of nostalgia, but one would expect no less from so prominent a writer. Mind you, her politics are a bit to the left of mine, but she's a good read, agree with her or not. She deserved the honour.